


Feathered Sky

by Ladycat



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Found Families, Post: s05e22 The Gift
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-11
Updated: 2014-02-11
Packaged: 2018-01-12 00:43:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1179888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladycat/pseuds/Ladycat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sighing, Xander settled back on his heels. A tool-box lay exposed and open beside him. The box itself was worn and battered, dark smudges marring the dull grey plastic; the tools within, however, gleamed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Feathered Sky

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place maybe 6 weeks after The Gift.

It was hot.

Tara fanned herself with a paper she’d folded row after row into, trying to get some air movement. To her, this was a familiar kind of heat—lazy Alabama summers with the air so thick it draped over the skin like a particular loathsome shirt, wet and heavy and desperately uncomfortable, bugs humming their joy as they dove in for each new, sweaty meal. Sense memory overwhelmed her, Mama on the porch mixing up something for dinner, Tara running back and forth from the kitchen, carrying whatever it was she needed, while Daddy and the boys horsed around in the fields, too overheated to work, but still full of too much energy to laze the way they claimed she and Mama were. Each inhalation was a bit of a shock, since Tara _didn’t_ smell that particular kind of tang that was growing things gone wild in the humidity, greens richer and more vibrant while everything else around them wilted.

The screen door slammed shut. “You’re insane,” Dawn said. She was trying for flat, the verbal equivalent of arms crossed over her chest, brow furrowed in upset. It was too hot to have your arms that close, though, and moving your face too much just encouraged the sweat to get in your eyes. “I mean it, you’re _insane_. Your apartment has air conditioning, doesn’t it? Go there!”

Tara let the slow, steady rock of her chair go still. “Hey, sweetie. You’re off to Spike’s?”

Dawn huffed. She wasn’t wearing make-up, which only might have been a nod to the humidity that would’ve melted it off in only a few moments. Dawn was a California girl, used to an easier, drier heat that she hardly noticed except for the glee of being able to wear short-shorts and halter-tops again. At least, she wanted to—none of them had been thrilled with that re-introduction to her wardrobe, so make-up had become Dawn’s choice of rebellion: bright, lurid reds that looked awful, greens and purples enough to make a Picasso blush. It looked... not _bad_ , but entirely inappropriate and very obviously a little girl trying to prove she wasn’t. So far no one had been blatant in their pity, but Tara had seen the effort in grocery stores and such.

She and Spike were waiting for Dawn to figure it out herself. Well, she was; she wasn’t sure Spike could last much longer.

“Yes,” she said, bored and drawling. “It’ll be cooler in his crypt, at least.”

Tara wasn’t sure of that, but smiled and nodded her approval. Dawn wouldn’t take a step off the porch without it, no matter how she might complain, and gaining it always made her eyes turn soft and sad—she didn’t realize it, Tara was sure, and seeing it always made Tara’s stomach sour. Dawn really _was_ a little girl, still. A very lost, very lonely one.

Her purse swung as she trotted down the street, faster than anyone sane could really contemplate in this heat.

“And we’re suddenly _not_ insanely protective and hovering over her every move?” Xander asked. He didn’t look up, focused on the screw he was trying to tighten, another poking out from the side of his mouth. “I would’ve driven her.”

“It’s too hot for anything bad to be out. And she’s starting to, um... ”

“Chafe? Grow resentful? Act like the kid she claims she isn’t by throwing effusive temper tantrums when it’s cooler out and the arm-waving doesn’t expose a less than perfume-y smell?” The screw was still in the corner of his mouth, giving him an oddly rakish, horror-movie-esque appearance as he turned to grin at her.

Tara never liked those movies, but she still smiled back. “Kinda all of the above, yeah.”

Sighing, Xander settled back on his heels. A tool-box lay exposed and open beside him. The box itself was worn and battered, dark smudges marring the dull grey plastic; the tools within, however, gleamed. Not a speck of dirt, not the slightest ding or nick on any of the bright, reflective surfaces could be seen. Only the hammer looked worn, but wood was harder to maintain. It scuffed faster than metal and was impossible to buff out without ruining the whole thing.

“You don’t need to do this,” she blurted suddenly. The last couple weeks had been carpenter-Xander free, something Tara had viewed with approval. Everybody had different defense mechanisms, and how no one else seemed to understand this was Xander’s, Tara didn’t know and didn’t care—he wasn’t important just because he could fix things. He didn’t _need_ to fix those things.

One dark eyebrow winged upward. “You mean you want to stay in a puddle of your own sweat? Er, that is,” he flushed, squirming awkwardly like a boy caught looking up a girl’s dress, not like the man he was becoming, “you don’t, actually, have a puddle or anything and you definitely don’t smell, well, okay, you don’t smell _bad_ and—”

Tara’s laughter was bright and lazy, rising up over the dappled pattern of the sun through unusually fluffy white clouds, twining with the wind-chimes that provided the melody for this lazy Sunday afternoon. “I like air conditioning, Xander,” she said, grinning broadly. “You just don’t _have_ to.”

He shrugged, diffident and oddly shy, eyes wide as she went back to laughing hard enough that her belly started to ache. He watched her, not trying to speak until she calmed—and then he gave her the smile of a man, a true adult man who understood all the things Willow was only growing sure of now, of the things Giles was too hurt to see to himself. “I know I don’t.”

Settling back on the rocking chair, Tara took up her paper fan and thought this is what her mother felt like, those equally lazy evenings when dinner was eaten and Dad played games with Tara and the boys, too sated to be wild, and giggling too hard to be smart. She’d always envied her mother that serene, beatific quality, and it makes her happy to know that she might have it, here.

Happier to know the people she shared it with were worthy of it.

“Hey,” she said. “Do you want more lemonade? I could make some, fresh.”


End file.
